and get to the bottom of those stairs

where wracked with guilt and despair,

she finally owned up to her “sin.”

She’d never do that again, she tells me,

at least I think that’s how she put it

when she told me the truth

or the version of it she’d decided to share.

She says it as if she’s talking about someone

she only dimly recognizes

as if I was only a detour on the way

to her real life

and that’s what I can’t reconcile.

When she said she was just a stupid girl

I thought about how much it had cost her and me,

but I couldn’t escape the feeling of displacement

of reeling from the shock of recognition

that doesn’t come from finding out

who you really are,

but who you are not,

neither a love child, nor a hate child,

just something that happened

while she wasn’t looking.

Her husband was twenty years older.

He ignored her, she said.

He had a girlfriend on the side.

She’d seen them together

and she’d promised herself

that she’d never be unfaithful,

but see how hard promises are to keep, she said,

shouldn’t we let sleeping dogs lie?

I’m one big lie, I thought

and she said, “I did it for your own good.”

I said, “You should quit while you’re ahead

and admit you were ashamed,”

and she said, “That’s not true,”

but I knew it was.

Even today, I’m a stranger to her.

When she looks at me, she sees him,

hears him ask her if she’s cold

in her thin, wool cardigan, cowboy shirt

loafers and Levis,

her long hair done up in Shirley Temple curls.

He smiles because she’s too old

for that hairstyle,

although she’s still a girl.

He asks, “Are you lost?

She answers boldly, “Not now.”

He was Japanese. He was studying physics

like Albert Einstein, he told her.

When I look in the mirror

sometimes I think I can see his face

imposed over mine,

although it’s only an outline really

with a bare fact, a detail

my mother doled out grudgingly.

I truly only see what he left

going faster than any E=mc2 formula

could take him,

escaping fatherhood like any other man

who hadn’t planned on staying long,

my otōsan, traveling light,

traveling at the velocity of darkness.

FAMILY

The old man sent for Papa,

but he wouldn’t go.

That’s what they tell me.

I don’t know.

He had land to give him.

He was on his death bed,

but Papa wouldn’t go.

Papa said, “Die like a dog, Old Man.”

He said it in the shed

where he kept the horse tack.

He said it when he fed the horses.

He said it in bed like a prayer,

then he kissed the only picture